Red Line
by BlackAster
Summary: During one of their fights, Zim and Dib fall in the clutches of a mysterious alien species that seems to have a twisted liking for experimenting on their captives. [ZaDe/ZaDf...kind of] (Cover by floweralien12 on Tumblr!) Warning: this story contains gore, blood and sensitive themes. (Rating is for gore/violence)


**Author's notes:**

Hello everyone!

This was supposed to be a Halloween fic, but I didn't have the time to finish it in time, between university and family stuff. I'm not completely happy with out it came out, but I decided to post it anyway, because I had told myself that I would have contributed to the season mood and so here I am (and I did, even if I'm super late)!

Warning! This fic contains blood, gore, violence, mentions of torture and mad anatomical experiments! If it's not your thing, don't read it!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Happy late spooky season!

 **Disclaimer:** the show and the characters belong to the rightful owners.

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"This is all _your_ fault."

The words were spoken in a quiet tone, but they echoed like eerie thunders in the dead silence of the cell. The hoarseness of the voice that had spelled them just made them sound even louder as it cracked at the edge of each syllable. The sharp intake of breath that followed seemed to remain hanging in the still air for a moment too long, causing the lingering tension in the atmosphere to raise even more.

Dib briefly considered chanting out all the curses that were currently rushing through his mind, but he quickly decided against it. His throat was so dry that it hurt every time he breathed in and he was already regretting having spoken that single sentence because it had sent a wave of agony burning down along his trachea and oesophagus. The renewed shock of pain had caught him off guard with its intensity even if he had been expecting it. Everything he did left him aching awfully, even the smaller movement, but clearly he still hadn't learnt to be prepared for how much it hurt each time.

He blinked a few times, rapidly, mostly to try and unload the nervous energy stored in his body without harming himself even more than he had already done. He had given up on trying to clear his sight _hours_ before. Or at least he thought that it had been hours. The truth was that he had no idea of how much time had passed since he had woken up in that silent room, miserable, in pain, freezing and _blind_.

An unpleasant shiver ran down his spine. When he had realised the latter thing, at first, he had freaked out. He had no idea of what had happened, still didn't, but he had quickly and _painfully_ understood that thrashing around in panic was the worst idea he could have had in his current situation. As soon as he had tried to move, overwhelmed by the sudden and confusing epiphany, he had found himself torn between wanting to scream for the stabbing pain that had blossomed in several spots in his upper body and being unable to do it because his lungs had decided to stop working in that very moment, leaving him paralysed and grasping for oxygen he couldn't get. For several, terrifying seconds, pure terror had gripped at his stomach, causing his guts to twist and deepening the already unbearable agony he had been in. He had truly thought that he would have perished there and then, unable to see, without knowing where he was and why he was dying in the first place.

Then, exactly when his consciousness had started to fade, he had felt _something_ in his chest, like a small discharge of electricity rushing along his nerves, and out of the blue air had flooded inside his starved lungs and his heart had abruptly slowed down, even if the terror had still been pumping in his veins. And yet, not even the revived, far too intense rush of adrenaline that had filled his system, together with the new wave of distressed confusion, had managed to raise his pulse. The beat had remained steady, utterly unaffected by his troubled emotions, and he had felt himself taking in a big gulp of oxygen and then releasing it slowly, before his lungs had started to breathe in and out on their own, with a similar, regular and unchangeable pace.

For several seconds he had just sat there, weight completely abandoned against the wall that had been keeping him seated while he was unconscious, blind eyes wide open, staring at the blackness before him and trying without any success to make sense of what was going on. It was as if someone had been controlling his vital functions from the outside, taking away the control he should have had on them, exactly as it was done in hospital with people in a coma. The relevant difference was that he was wide awake and completely conscious.

Dib let his eyes slid shut again, wishing that he could have at least sighed, and then he focused for a moment on the way the air rhythmically entered and left his lungs, since there was nothing else he could do. After he had recovered from the shock and, especially, calmed down enough to put some order in his thoughts, which had taken a good while, he had tried to shift again, this time more carefully and slowly. He had found out that he still had control over his limbs, even if he had been forced to concentrate more than it should have been necessary to move them. Whatever was affecting his inner organs hadn't completely taken over his body, or so it seemed, and the thought had comforted him a bit.

He had moved his feet and slightly shaken his legs first, to make sure than they were still there, and then had carefully brought his hands up to his chest, to find out what was causing the pain he was experiencing. It had been then that he had found the _wires_. Thin but very solid metal cables inserted deeply in his flesh, like the parasitic roots of rotting weeds. The first his fingers had met stabbed him right next the left side of his sternum, above the upper border of his fifth rib. The discovery had left him disoriented and unsettled for a few moments, fingertips tracing the hems of the wound to make sure that his senses weren't tricking him. Or rather, _hoping_ that they were. However, there had been no denying it and he had felt panic raising again, under the calm rhythm of his breathing. The thing was piercing straight through him where his _heart_ was supposed to be and yet he was still alive and not so bad, all considered, despite the pain. How was it even possible?

He had hurried to move his hands away, trying not to give into the impulse to allow his mind to shut down, and had busied himself with exploring the rest of his body. He had found two more wires sticking out from each side of his ribcage, most like _connected_ to his lungs, and another, thicker one stabbing him a few centimetres above his belly button. Frowning, he had carefully pushed around it, trying to understand where exactly it went, since, for what he knew, there were no other vital organs in the area. Eventually, when he had arched his back and felt it pushing back against the movement, he had grasped that the cable had to most likely reach his spine. It had to be the reason why he couldn't see. Who knows what that thing was doing and could have done to his nervous system, aside from controlling his vital functions.

At that point, he had dropped his arms back down, meaning to slump against the wall and let the shock and the helplessness wash over him, but his attention had been diverted once again when his elbow had accidentally bumped into something. Something softer than the metal he could feel against his back, something warmer, _organic_. His eyes had widened once again as he had abruptly been reminded that he hadn't ended up in that mess alone and his hand had instantly shot towards the body set next to his, fingers blindly finding the shapes of a thin wrist and of the three-clawed hand connected to it. The junctions under the thick material of his nemesis's gloves had twitched in answer to his touch, telling him that Zim had to be awake too.

He had wondered how he hadn't noticed the Invader sooner. There couldn't be more than a few inches between their bodies and the thought had brought him a rash of anger, which had temporarily replaced the anxiety that had been haunting him. He had the alien to blame for the situation they were stuck in and for whatever horror his body had been subjected to. His first impulse had been to put some more distance between them, even if it would have meant facing another wave of agony. He just couldn't bare the idea of being so close to his nemesis in that moment. It seemed even more despicable than it normally was.

However, just as he had been about to shift, the Invader's hand had wrapped around his arm, grip tight enough to hurt, and his voice had reached him in a low hiss. "Don't…Don't you dare to move, Dib-filth. If you…If you want to…keep your life…stay _still_."

There had been something in Zim's tone that had instantly coaxed Dib into obeying. His rival had sounded as much in pain as he himself was and his voice had broken a few times while he had spat out his order, as if he had been gritting his teeth all the way through each sentence, but that hadn't been what had stopped the human. The Irken had also sounded like he had been focusing hard onto something else while speaking and, moreover, there had been a sense of _finality_ in his words, a peculiar hue in his tone that had told Dib that Zim's wasn't a mere threat to scare him into submission, but a _fact_. And the idea that the feeling could be more than a paranoid impression was utterly terrifying.

Despite the new flood of dreadful confusion that had filled him, all the teen had been able to do had been nodding slightly. His nemesis clearly knew more than he did about their situation, possessed some _vital_ information that would have cleared all the doubts he had, but he hadn't been in the conditions to ask in that moment, so he had just remained quiet and as still as possible, just lake he had been told. He had still tried to question the other, an undefined amount of time later, once his throat had started to cooperate once again, but all his inquiries had met in answer had been a thick wall of silence.

The human slowly brought a hand up to his face, rubbing it on his slightly numb temple. He had to have lost a significant amount of blood at some point, most likely when the wires had been inserted in his body, because everything under his cold skin felt weak and dazed. The emotional turmoil that had been consuming him just worsened the physical sickness and the complete lack of sound had quickly started to unnerve him, once he had settled in his spot for good. Zim hadn't spoken another word after his warning and, for once, Dib had been forced to admit that he missed the Irken's annoying, mostly senseless rambling. Having the Invader sitting next to him, completely motionless and unnaturally quiet fed his inner agitation, making it hard for him to fight back and not to spiral down even more in fear and madness.

He gulped slowly, attempting to push some saliva down his achingly dry throat, knowing that it wouldn't have brought him any relief. He had been trying for…he wasn't sure of how long, but definitely long enough to be certain that it was useless. However, he didn't have much else to do, so anything that could distract him from the pain and the position he was in, without bringing him on the edge of another breakdown, was welcome.

"Zim?" He tried again, in a whisper that had lost all the hostility carried by his previous words. He wasn't expecting a reaction, since he had got none with his few, stubborn previous attempts. So when he felt a movement next to him, his head jerked towards where he supposed the alien was sitting, surprise colouring his pale skin and eyes scanning the darkness that confined them, even if he rationally knew that he wouldn't have suddenly started to see again just because he was _trying_ harder. "Z-"

"Will you _hush_ , foolish creature?!"

A low snarl cut him off before he could repeat his rival's name. The Irken's voice sounded less shaky than it had been earlier, but it still carried a considerable amount of pain, fact that couldn't not worry the teen. Usually the alien healed incredibly quickly, at least for human standards, and knowing that, even after all that time, he was still wounded too had to mean serious troubles. Considering what their captors had done to him, it was hard to imagine what they could have done to Zim. Had they tampered with his PAK? Under other circumstances, Dib would have been interested in knowing how exactly they had managed to do it, because such information would have been precious for his self-assigned mission to stop the Invader once and for all, but in that moment his nemesis was his best chance at getting out of there. And most likely to undo whatever had been done to him. It wasn't the right time to think about their war. That, though, didn't mean that the other's hostile words hadn't made his irritation flare back once again.

" _Hush_?!" He repeated, in a low voice, but the frustration it carried and the way in which his fists tightened, knuckles turning white, made up for the lack of volume. "I…Do you have any idea of what kind of position I'm currently in?! How am I supposed to stay calm and _quiet_ with these…these things stuck _inside_ me?! And I can't even see what exactly they are!"

Zim let out another sound at the words, a mixture between a growl and a high-pitched click. He should have expected that shutting the human up wouldn't have been easy. It was a miracle that the silence had lasted so long and he probably had Dib's shock to thank for that. He squeezed his eyes closed tightly for a few moments, taking in a deep breath and trying to will his growing anger away. He couldn't afford getting worked up, not when both their lives were hanging on literal threads. Threads that _he_ was holding, quite literally in that case too.

The Irken had woken up much earlier than the human. His system had metabolised the anaesthetics they had been injected before the _surgery_ , if the mishap they had been subjected to could be called that way, much faster and he had found himself lying down on the floor of that very same cold cell. The first thing he had noticed had been that he was in a tremendous amount of pain. His spooch had kept contorting uneasily, as if it had been struggling to push out thick blades that were stabbing through it. Agony and nausea had hit him in waves, making it hard for him to focus on anything else. He had gagged, as his insides spasmed rhythmically, causing him to sputter out. Pink blood had dripped down his lips and on the metal floor, spreading a bittersweet scent all around.

After far too long for Zim's liking, his guts had finally started to settle down, mostly ceasing their futile struggle, and he had been allowed to catch his breath, enough to notice that something else was off with his body. There were random electrical discharges running along his nerves, which had to be the cause of the spasming of his organs. His organic shell was malfunctioning and there was just one explanation for that. His PAK had to have been _tampered_ with. It would have also explained why he felt so confused, so _split_ , as if he had been receiving and processing data from two independent sources.

His eyes had snapped open at that realisation, horror filling him so strongly and quickly that he had temporarily forgotten his physical agony. No one should have been allowed to touch a PAK, normally not even the Irken carrying it. The only ones who had the right and skills to stick their fingers among the complicated and delicate mechanisms were the medics, in case of necessity. And the Control Brains, of course. The idea that some filthy _alien_ could have broken that strict rule made him feel sick, made his already upset spooch contort and hurt even more than it had already. He had been _violated_ , the core of his being had been tainted and manipulated by foreign, untrained hands. Even if no permanent physical damage would have been left behind, the memory was an emotional scar that he wouldn't have forgotten any time soon.

It had been then that, still in his shellshock state, he had noticed the third off detail. Namely the fact that there was an unconscious Dib lying there on the floor, face to face with him, mere inches away. That sight had been the last straw and, in a fit of panic and fury, he had jerked back, wanting to put some distance between him and the human, especially after having been reminded of how they had ended up in those aliens' clutches in the first place. He might have been the one to make a mistake and cross the wrong border, but if his nemesis had left him and his plans alone, none of that would have ever happened.

However, as soon as he had tried to push himself away from the teen's space, a new burst of hot agony had shaken him, tearing a scream out of his throat. Something had moved inside his torso, tearing the freshly repaired tissue of his flesh and organs. He had found himself clutching his hands into the cloth of his torn uniform, eyes screwed shut once again as he waited for the pain to pass, barely aware of the hot blood pouring out and soaking his clothes and of its bittersweet taste, which had once again filled both his mouth and the air around him. His PAK had started to buzz too, in utter confusion, as it had tried to process yet another flood of contrasting data, one carrying the suffering he was actually experiencing and the other signalling none of it. His sight had blurred, as his organic shell threatened to shut down again, but he had been too overwhelmed to attempt to fight back, not when his brain was filled with opposite information.

He wouldn't have been able to tell for how long he had remained there, on the edge of a literal short-circuit. Minutes, hours, days. Time wasn't something he could have quantified, even if he had wanted to. He had felt stuck, as if he had been drowning in a tank filled with a thick and heavy liquid, unable to swim back to the surface, but also to sink down completely.

Eventually, the pain had started to dull and his mind had cleared enough to allow him to focus back on the present. Slowly, he had pried his eyes open, loosening the death grip he had on his uniform. He needed to assess his situation, urgently, because understanding what had happened could turn out to be vital, both to spare himself another fit of tremendous agony and to get out of there.

Swallowing loudly with sudden nervousness, he had lowered his gaze down towards the small space that separated him and the human and everything had instantly become clear in his once again horrified mind. There were four metallic wires coming out of his chest and sinking into precise spots on the human's, effectively connecting them to one another. However, that was merely the start of it. The shape and the colours of the cables were unmistakable in his eyes. Irken-made technology. More precisely the kind of wires that his people used to connect their PAKs to electronics. _His_ wires. Piercing through his back all the way to his front, coming from _his_ PAK. Connected to his _nemesis_ 's body. That explained everything. Not just the horrendous pain he had experienced, but also why he was receiving so many foreign data. The unknown bunches of information came from Dib's biological systems. Their captors had used the Invader's own tech to link the two of them together, so now his PAK wasn't just dealing with Zim's organic shell, but controlling the human's vital functions too.

The Invader's magenta orbs had moved up to meet his rival's features. The teen's face was contorted in discomfort, even in his unconsciousness, most likely due to the abrupt changes in his breathing and heart rate Zim himself had to have caused while caught in his disoriented panic. His skin was sickly pale and there were dark bags under his eyes, which made his look even more _ghostly_. The alien blinked, tilting his head slightly. He could have simply tried to unhook himself from the being in front of him, making his PAK ignore the data coming from the other and causing the human's organs to stop functioning, _killing_ him. It would have been the easiest solution, because after that he could have torn the wires out of Dib's corpse, given himself some time to heal and then broken out of there, possibly leaving behind some destruction in the process. A fitting revenge on whoever had _dared_ to humiliate and touch the Mighty Zim. Then he could have gone back to Earth and taken over the planet, without worrying about having to deal with that persistent nuisance that the human had been for the last four years. He could have finally accomplished his mission and got the recognition he deserved. Left that hateful ball of dirt behind, once and for all.

For a long moment, he had considered the idea, the temptation fuelled by his still lingering anger. It could have been the end of his troubles and once he would have completed his secret task no one would have dared to question his abilities. However, soon enough he had found himself shaking his head as flashes of endless, boring days, lack of motivation and of heat and an odd but undeniable sense of emptiness had filled his mind. He had got too used to having Dib antagonising him, to the fire that their fights sparked inside him. Not even his loyalty to the Empire and the Tallest pushed him to try so hard. Earth was much more bearable because he had his nemesis being a constant pain in his neck. His rival might have spoiled so many of his brilliant plans, brought pain and humiliation upon him far too many times for his liking, but he was also the one person that made all the troubles he daily went through worth it. Zim might have despised him more than he despised anything else, but that special kind of hatred they had for each other was also what made their connection as strong as it was. He was sure that he wouldn't have shared such a feeling with anyone ever again. Offing the human in such a cowardly, anticlimactic way just felt _wrong_.

His eyes had narrowed in both determination and displeasure. He would have had to keep the foolish creature alive and get them both back to his base, so that he could have separated them. Somehow. The first step was giving them a bit more space for movement and he had better achieve it while Dib was still unconscious. He had already been having a hard time controlling himself and making sure that he hadn't accidentally stopped the teen's heart. The last thing he had wanted was having to deal with his nemesis freaking out, especially considering what he had to do.

His PAK had buzzed lightly as roughly more three feet of the four wires emerged from it and the Irken's breath had hitched, his whole body going rigid at the prospect of what he had been about to do. He had clenched his fists, irritation mixing with the already present anxiety. He was an Invader, he couldn't be afraid of pain, no matter how intense it might have been. He would have healed and, if that was the price he needed to pay to get both himself and Dib out of the clutches of whoever had done _that_ to them, then he would have gladly paid it. And his reckoning would have made them regret even just having thought about doing that sick experiment on them.

Zim felt a small shiver at the memory of how eerie his voice had sounded, echoing in a muffled scream as the metal has pushed its way through his flesh once again, from side to side, more pink blood sprouting from the wounds and creating the still drying pool set a few steps away from where he had dragged himself and the human after the agony had dulled and he had managed to catch his breath. The sick, wet sound of the liquid being poured on the floor still rang in his head, making his spooch revolt. He gritted his teeth and shook his head firmly. There was no use on dwelling on his past suffering now. His hands were already far too full in that moment.

"Zim?! You can't keep giving me the silent treatment!" Dib's voice suddenly broke into his thoughts, carrying an equal dose of panic and anger. "I…As much as I hate the thought, we need to work _together_ on this." The teen's face contorted in a grimace at his own words, but he kept talking. "I can't…I can't see you, but I can tell that you're…not fine either. And we both want to get out of here, so…You'll have to work with me, space scum."

The Invader rolled his eyes, his lips curling down in a scowl that he knew his rival couldn't see. _Yet_. Once again, he didn't answer right away, but instead he took a couple of seconds to studying the other. The human was leaning heavily against wall and yet his posture still looked unsteady. His hands kept brushing the space around him, most likely trying, in vain, to compensate for his blindness. He didn't disagree with what his nemesis had said, but he also had the unpleasant feeling that escaping would have turned out to be harder than they expected, especially once Dib would have fully realised in what kind of troubles they were. Keeping the teen unaware of how serious their position truly was might have spared him the nuisance of having to deal with some horrified screaming, but moving around would have been much easier if his rival had been able to see. He would have to bear the human's hysteria, for the sake of getting out of that place.

"Zim _knows_ that, worm child," he hissed out, digging his claws into his palms not to wince as he pushed himself away from the support of the wall. They had waited long enough. The more time they spent in that cell, the more likely it became that their captors would have come back to carry out some other demented experiment on them. "Now, don't make me regret my decision to save your pitiful, worthless existence. Don't freak out or anything equally stupid."

Dib's features contorted in confusion for the umpteenth time. What was the green idiot talking about? Aside from the fact that he was already freaking out, and had been since he had woken up, his nemesis's words made little sense to him. The feeling that he had to be missing something vital concerning whatever had happened to them hit him once again, hard enough to let him dazed for a long moment. The fact that his body still wasn't reacting to his emotions made it more difficult to metabolise them and he wasn't sure of how long he would have been able to prevent himself from trying something reckless just because he _needed_ to feel his heart rate spiking up.

He gritted his teeth, so hard that his jaw ached. "What are you even…" He started to snap back, but the words died on his tongue as soon as a flash of colour suddenly passed in front of his eyes, leaving him blinking in mute astonishment.

For the briefest moment, he thought that he had imagined it, that his brain had got so desperate to see something that it had decided to project random images and stains of memories inside the darkness. However, he quickly discarded the idea as something flickered before him once again. This time the spots of colour didn't fade, but started to deepen, to take different hues and forms, even if everything remained blurred for a painfully long amount of time. Dib found himself blinking rapidly, instinctively trying to clear his sight more quickly, eyes and mind desperately clinging to what seemed to be the so desperately wished for way out of the unnatural darkness he had found himself stuck in.

Finally the world began to retake shapes he could recognise and the first he fully put into focus was his nemesis's face. He instantly noticed that Zim's skin was paler than it should have been, a slightly yellowish hue mixing with his normal green tone. The same pain he had grasped in the Irken's voice was reflected in his features, and so was the forced concentration.

His gaze, though, didn't linger on the alien's face for longer than the time necessary to take in those details and to frown, and moved downwards, towards his chest, looking for the main source of his dulled but still present inner panic. The wires emerging from his torso. And it was then that everything suddenly became clear, even if for several moments his mind refused to accept the reality that stood undeniable before his eyes. He traced the length of the sturdy metal thread back and forwards, mouth slightly agape. The ends on his side were slightly covered with dark red, coagulated blood, his own, the same that was staining the from of his T-shirt, while most of the rest was encrusted with a bright pink liquid. Irken blood. _Zim's_ blood.

The teen tried and failed to suck in a breath, his lungs refusing to break their regular rhythm. His nemesis was the machine controlling his breathing and heartbeat. Their chests raised and fell at the same time and he was sure that, if he had been able to check the pulsing of whatever part of the alien's body could be considered an equivalent of a human heart, he would have found it was beating in synchrony with his own heart. Now the Invader's words made sense, too. Zim's PAK was connected to his nervous system and his rival had purposefully blinded him to keep him from reacting badly and harm them both in a fit of panic. Now he was almost wishing that the other hadn't chosen to give him his sight back. Being stuck in the darkness, unable to tell what exactly was going on, had been awful and terrifying, but this was…almost too much.

Dib's fingers slowly closed around the wire connected to his heart. He wanted to pull it out, even if he knew that he would have most likely killed himself if he had, but the awareness of being connected, basically _sewed_ to Zim made him feel even sicker than the idea of dying. He felt powerless and helpless, knowing that he was at his arch enemy's complete disposal. He had been forced to ask for the alien's help already in the past, but this was different. His life was _literally_ in the Irken's sharp fingers, his to crush or fiddle with. Zim could have murdered him with a single thought, in a flash or slowly, putting him through the agony of having his oxygen stolen away bit by bit. He had fought so hard to keep the alien's claws off the Earth and that made the irony of their current situation even bitterer and more unbearable. His nemesis's plans of conquest might still be just a bunch of failures, but Zim had, even if not by his one volition, successfully invaded _him_.

His stomach contorted and he felt his throat closing slightly as a wave of shaken disgust filled him, followed closely by a rush of nausea, so strong that almost made him retch. The impulse to pull that _thing_ out of him, to get the Invader out of his body, out of his literal head, overwhelmed him. It couldn't be happening. He couldn't bear that connection a moment longer, he couldn't allow such a deep, _physical_ reminder of how dependent on each other the two of them had become to exist. Not if he wanted to be still able to extinguish the shadows of the hesitation he felt at times in the back of his mind and to hold onto his priorities. To focus on his mission and nothing else.

His fingers tightened around the wire, but before he could even just try to pull, the iron grip was back, wrapped around his wrists, startling him and causing him to freeze. His head whipped back up and he found himself staring right back into Zim's narrowed magenta orbs. The Irken looked anything but pleased, his thin frame shaking with barely repressed anger. He was gritting his teeth so hard that it _had_ to hurt and Dib had the feeling that repressing the urge to kill him there and then had to be _painful_ for his nemesis.

"Dib-thing," the Invader hissed out, his voice low and openly threatening. What was the human even thinking?! He had so _mercifully_ decided to spare him and now his rival was considering ending his own worthless existence? How did he dare? "I told you not to do anything foolish. Now, I know that it must be incredibly hard not to, with that rotten, inferior brain of yours, but you said it yourself, stink beast. We need to…" His expression contorted even more, reluctance joining the fury in it. "To… _cooperate_."

The teen swallowed, glancing down at where the Invader was holding his arms, his eyebrows knotting together. However, he allowed the other to detach his fingers from around the wire before looking back up. "I…If we get out of here, can you fix… _this_?" He asked, sounding breathless despite the fact that his body was being supplied regularly with enough air. He waved his hand between them. He didn't even know how to call what had been done to them and he didn't want to give it a name. He just wished that he could forget about it.

Zim rolled his eyes, trying to cross his arms on the chest, but he just ended up bumping against the cables and making them both wince in pain. So, he just growled out a clicking curse under his breath and offered a curt nod. "Of course, worm child. Once we'll be back at my base, Zim will delete every evidence of this…offensive disaster and we'll never speak of it again," he claimed with more confidence than he was feeling. He had no idea of how he would have disentangled them, but he had no doubt that he would have found a way. No matter what it would have taken. He refused even to just consider the possibility that they would have been forced to coexist as they were now for more than a few hours. "Now, if you're done asking foolish questions, let's get out of this stinky ship."

Without waiting for an answer, he struggled to get on his feet. His legs shook for a moment and he was forced to take a step closer to the human not to pull the wires, but he eventually managed to steady himself, raising his chin and looking down at the teen expectantly. "Can you stand, useless being?" He huffed, placing his hands on his hips. His whole body was aching and his muscles were already protesting, but he stubbornly ignored those unpleasant sensations. He couldn't afford to look _weak_. He had already been humiliated enough for several Irken rotations.

"If that's your idea of "working together", we'll never get out of here," Dib grumbled under his breath, but he nodded in answer to the question. He pushed himself away from the wall and placed his palms flat down on the cold floor. He had the feeling that Zim wasn't in the mood to be patient and he couldn't really blame him. He himself wished to get out of that place and back to Earth as soon as possible, so that he could have himself back. He chose to cling to the reassurance he had been offered, not even thinking of questioning the resolution with which it had been spoken, and made an effort to do as he had been told.

His head started to spin as soon as he tried to lift himself up. His body was still as in shock as his mind was, weak and drained, and the teen felt himself falling backwards as soon as his hands were off the ground and he had tried to stand on his feet. His eyes widened in panic and he mentally cursed how his heartbeat once again failed to spike as terror pumped a new rush of dreadful adrenaline in his system. He might have tried to unhook himself from Zim not much time before, but now that he was slightly calmer he had realised that he did _not_ want to die. And yet, apparently, he was about to be killed by something as idiotic as tripping on his own feet. He couldn't have thought of a _lamest_ and less dignified way to leave that universe.

However, instead of the unbearable pain he had anticipated before the fatal darkness, he just felt curt tug on his arm and a moment later he was staring at the Irken's unimpressed, openly irritated expression. He gulped slightly as reading in the Invader's eyes how much the alien was wishing to just end painfully him and this time he was left wondering about why his nemesis was going through all those troubles to keep him alive, when leaving his corpse behind would have been much easier. Could it be that detaching them without caution and the right instrumentation might have harmed Zim too? Or had the other chosen to willingly spare his life, for some obscure reason? For those parallels and similarities he himself had been trying so hard to deny and see?

"I…Uh, maybe I can't stand on my own," he offered, reaching out to rub the back of his head with his free hand and discarding those thoughts. It wasn't the right moment for such complex questions and he honestly hoped that he would have forgotten about them, by the time they had been heading back home.

Zim let out a short stream of clicks he didn't bother to translate in anything close to English and reluctantly pulled Dib closer to him, wrapping the human's arm around his shoulders. His face contorted in mild disgust at the closeness, even if a spark of satisfaction lit up his eyes when he saw the same expression blossoming on his nemesis's features, and he glanced down with resentment at the wires connecting them.

"You humans are so _weak_ ," he claimed with a mixture of mockery and distaste, as he pulled the teen again, this time to make him walk. His steps faltered visibly when most of the other's weight was dumped on him, but he clenched his fists and kept going, refusing to admit that maybe he himself was weaker than he had thought. "How has your pathetic species survived for so long with its stupidity and defectiveness is a mystery to me."

"Says…the one who has been trying to conquer the Earth for over three years and…and still hasn't," Dib shot back, out of habit. The comeback was hardly effective with how hoarse his voice came out, but in that moment he didn't really care about winning a verbal fight. He was too busy with struggling to take one step after the other and with trying to ignore the flaring pain that came with each movement he made. If Zim hadn't been holding him up, he would have collapsed in the matter of a heartbeat. Moreover, he could tell that the Invader himself was in a far worse shape than he was trying to appear. He would have known it even if he hadn't been able to see the grimace on his rival's face. His own heartbeat and breathing had sped up, which meant that the other's system was working harder to put up with the effort it was subjected to. He just hoped that Irkens were as resilient as they boasted, because otherwise they would have had no chance to make it out alive.

" _Lies_!" Zim snapped back, shooting him a heatedly enraged glare, but then he clenched his teeth and focused on walking. As much as he would have liked to teach the human a lesson he wouldn't have forgotten any time soon, and he could have done it just by giving his PAK an order, he couldn't discard his priorities for a petty revenge. There would have been time for that later, once they would have been back on Earth and _separated_ again. Besides, he still needed to get his payback on the filthy creatures who had dared to do _this_ to him too. "Spare your breath for something useful as _walking_ , Dib-stink. Zim will not carry you all the way to the Voot."

The teen rolled his eyes again, but this time he made sure to bite his tongue and keep quiet. For once, the alien was right. He needed to save the little energy he had. He let his eyes wander around cell as they trudged towards the door, taking in the bare metal walls and the expanse of the floor until his gaze met the pool of drying pink blood. He shot a brief glance in Zim's direction, before returning his attention to the spot. He had vaguely noticed that the Invader's uniform was heavily stained with blood, much more than his own shirt, and that some of it seemed… _fresher_. What had Irken done while he had been unconscious? He had just criticised his nemesis for not making any real effort for their cooperation, but perhaps the other had already done more than he could imagine.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally reached the locked door. Dib instantly let go of the alien to go and lean into the wall once again, even if not without a hint of reluctant. While he wasn't thrilled about sharing his personal space with his mortal enemy, Zim's body was a source of warmth that had soothed the chill in his limbs, making the pain slightly more bearable for the time of the walk to their first stop. Perhaps it was the lack of blood and consequently of oxygen to his brain that made him have those thoughts, but he found himself missing the shared heat. However, he wasn't dazed enough to do something as stupid as speaking those thoughts out aloud, so he just rested his head against the cold metal and watched as the Invader unceremoniously tore away the panel covering the door controls and started to tinker with the wires and the small screen set inside it.

The human slowly let the numbness take over his mind, allowing himself to feel truly as tired as he was, both emotionally and physically. Most of the hysteria he had been experiencing had faded, not because he had accepted the situation he was in, but simply because he didn't have the energy to stay in a panicked state anymore. His eyes slid shut and he focused on the steady rhythm of his lungs and heart. It was weird to think that they reflected Zim's own, but, past the oddness and the disgust the thought brought him, he had to admit that knowing that he wasn't alone in that situation was somehow comforting. It was true that, if they were in that situation, half of the blame belonged to his nemesis, but he also had to admit that, if he had been on his own, he would have most likely never got out of there in one piece. Not to mention that it had been the Irken to snap him out of his fright and force him to focus on survival instead.

"Dib-human," Zim's voice echoed from next to him, abruptly bringing him back to reality. "This is no time for your sleeping cycle." The Invader fidgeted slightly in his spot, looking like he was trying to swallow something incredibly unpleasant. His fists clenched and unclenched a couple of times before he took a step backwards, making space for the human to come in front of the open panel. "I… _This_ necessitates your assistance."

Dib tilted his head slightly, moving his eyes between the alien and the open control panel. Some of the wires had been moved and pulled, but the door was still firmly locked, clearly indicating that whatever his rival had been trying hadn't worked out. Despite the draining intensity of the emotions he had been feeling and the physical ache, he cracked a small smirk. It was rare for Zim to ask for assistance, his especially, and he couldn't help finding the Irken's uneasiness and clear humiliation quite _satisfying_.

"Can't keep up with the enemy's tech, space boy?" He mocked as he carefully pushed himself away from the wall, to be able to step in the spot that had been freed for him. "Shouldn't disarming such _inferior_ systems be child play for you?"

Zim hissed under his breath at the taunt, balling his hands at his sides. "Of course I can do it! Even a smeet could hack into this _primitive_ system, Dib-thing!" He growled out, lifting a threatening fist. "Zim could do it with his eyes closed…If I wasn't too busy trying to regulate both mine and _your_ vital functions, you stinky meat beast!" His magenta eyes narrowed with ill-concealed anger. "Or would you rather for me to forget about the fact that you need to breath and focus only on opening this door?"

He lifted his chin at the alarmed look that the human shot him. He hated admitting how much keeping his nemesis alive was costing him, because the fact had implications he didn't want to consider, but the hint of mad pleasure that he felt seeing Dib's already pale face whitening even more made up for it, at least in part. The foolish worm child was finally starting to grasp how fully dependant on him he was and, as much as that forced connection made him sick, it also brought the Invader a strong sense of invincibility. His people bathed in the inebriation of being able to decide what to do with the inferior races they conquered and enslaved and the fact that it was his mortal enemy he had all that power upon made it all even more exhilarating.

Dib frowned at the almost manic look that had blossomed on the Irken's face, but he chose not to comment on it. Every second they spent fighting and insulting each other was precious time they weren't using to make their own escape. Moreover, the reminder that the alien had just given him had made more shivers of dread run down his spine, renewing the wave of nausea that had possessed him when he had first realised that his life was literally in his rival's claws. He knew that, if he had given himself the time to ponder the thought, he would have ended up doing something stupid once again, so he deemed safer to concentrate on the task he had been assigned. And also on the fact that Zim, despite his harsh ways, was still making sure to keep his heart beating. The weird comfort wasn't enough to wash away all the ill feelings, but it soothed them enough to allow him to ignore them for the time being.

His amber eyes scanned the panel in front of him, touching the different wires and the small screen. The mechanism didn't look too complicated and he was sure that, given a few minutes of peace and quiet, he could have hacked into. There was just a small problem.

"Uh, Zim. I can't read… _alien_. How am I supposed to…" He started to say, without looking away from the display where several odd symbols were blinking, but he cut himself off before he could finish the sentence as he felt a small shock shaking the inside of his spine.

He winced and reached out to rub his back, already ready to turn towards the alien and growl out an insult for what he at first thought had just been a mean way to shut him up, but the words died on his tongue as soon as he realised that, out of the blue, he could understand what was written on the screen. On one hand, the symbols still looked foreign to him, and yet at the same time he knew what they meant. It was an odd feeling, as if he was looking at the words with eyes that weren't his own. And perhaps, in a way, he was.

He turned to shoot the Invader a look that was half way between wariness and awe. "Did you just…"

"Get to work, worm child," Zim cut him off, glancing away to avoid the human's questioning glance. He was facilitating the teen just because it brought an advantage to him too. That temporary sharing of information was nothing but an act dictated by pure convenience. "And don't get weird ideas. I'm just _borrowing_ you my superior knowledge. It's quicker than translating everything for your big smelly head. Now, hurry up."

Dib was strongly tempted to talk back, even just out of spite, but once again he chose to bite his tongue and simply nodded, turning his attention back to the panel. Maybe some questions, especially when they were so thorny, had better stay unanswered. Besides, he had work to do. If, once they would have been out of there, safe and sound, he had still felt like inquiring, he would have. For now, it was better for everyone if he let the matter rest.

A few minutes later, the door of the cell quietly slid open, revealing an ill-lit corridor. Zim grabbed the human without a single word, hooking his arm around his shoulders once again and starting to drag him outside the room. He still took the time to put on a disgusted expression to underline how much he disliked their forced closeness, but this time his claws reached out to grab the upper side of the teen's ribcage, to make sure that the other wouldn't trip. Dib just rolled his eyes at him in answer, but he did his best to follow and not to dump his whole weight on the Invader as they started to trudge along the corridor.

The air was just as cold as the one in the cell had been and it carried the same metallic, aseptic smell. The lower lights, though, spread odd shadows all around, drawing eerie forms in every corner and angle. The falling of their boots on the floor and their panting breaths were the only sounds in the otherwise complete silence, together with the whispers of rhythmic beeping coming from some of the rooms they passed, and each of them resonated far too loudly for comfort. The metal walls of the corridors made each step they took look like a mere repetition of the previous ones, giving them the distressing feeling to be trapped in some sort of nightmarish loop.

Dib's eyes kept darting around, touching each of the identical doors they passed, frantically searching for a sign that could tell him that they were approaching what would have been their way out, while he allowed Zim to lead him and did his best not to trip on his feet. He had the feeling that his nemesis wouldn't have appreciated it if he had accidentally attracted attention or triggered an alarm and made their escape even harder than it already was.

The thought caused him to glance around nervously for the umpteenth time. Maybe it was just his growing exhaustion, but he felt as if someone had been spying on him, maliciously laughing at his every pained wince and suffered movement. A shiver ran down his spine. What if their captors were watching them through some hidden camera? What if it was all part of their next trick and if they had fed them the false illusion of having a chance to escape just to crush their hopes at the very last moment? He didn't want to say that it had been too easy for them to leave their cell, because his guts felt like they were slowly being ripped out at every step he took and he was pretty sure that Zim had to be experiencing the same amount of dull agony, but he would have expected more surveillance. After all, if those aliens had gone through the trouble of performing such a complex surgery on them, they surely would have wanted to keep their experiment under observation. Wouldn't they?

The frantic trail of his thoughts was suddenly interrupted when the Irken abruptly stopped his tracks without him noticing, causing him to bump into his nemesis's side hard enough to affect their already precarious balance. Zim let out a hiss, of both surprise and irritation, as he stumbled forward, pulling the wires that linked them in the process. The metal slid slightly further through his flesh, but Dib managed to grab onto his arm before the worst of the damage could be done and they found themselves facing each other once again, breathing in the bittersweet hint of the Invader's blood that had filled the air between them.

The alien was the first to recover, mostly because, once he had got his bearings back, the shock he had experienced melted into anger, the emotion being further fuelled by the renewed burning in his wounds. One of his hands shot forward, claws wrapping around the torn cloth of the human's shirt, roughly but still careful to avoid the wires.

"Watch your steps, stink beast! Or has your useless brain finally rotten completely?!" He fumed, throwing his hands in the air, even if he tried not to yell as loudly as he wanted to. They hadn't run into any kind of security system on their way, but that didn't mean that the place was safe. Quite the opposite, considering what had been done to them. "Don't make me regret my choice to spare your worthless existence!"

Dib opened his mouth to instinctively spit out that he hadn't asked to be rescued or kept alive and that Zim had no rights to blame him for his decision, but he decided against it at the last moment and simply let out a huff instead, glancing away for a moment. Better not to push his luck, especially when his situation was already complicated enough. He didn't want to be killed and dumped in the corridor of an alien spaceship, forgotten and not mourned by a planet that would have become nothing but a factory filled of slaves, without someone standing in the Irken's way.

"You could have warned me," he chose to say instead, his hand gripping at the Invader's arm more tightly, mostly for balance. Then his eyes dropped on the alien's chest, where the stains on the other's uniform had darkened because of the fresh sprouts of blood. Some of the annoyance that had been colouring his pale face turned into awkwardness. "Do you…Uh, are you okay?"

Zim openly squinted at him at the question that they both felt as odd and out of place between them. They had hardly worried about each other's well-being and, while the circumstances did call for such a concern, it still felt incredibly weird. Avoiding each other's eyes for the moment being seemed to be a good silent agreement.

"Zim is fine, worm child," the Irken grumbled under his breath, pulling the teen's arm to lead him to lean against the wall. His chest burnt and his spooch was anything but happy with the wounds that had been reopened inside it, but once again he did his best to ignore the feeling. "And I stopped for a reason. If you had been paying attention instead of getting lost in that gargantuan head of yours, you would have noticed."

"Will everyone ever stop saying that my head is big when it's clearly _not_?" Dib muttered under his breath, resting the back of his skull against the metal surface of the wall. The material was far too cold for his liking, but he was grateful for the small break. Biting back a sigh he couldn't have let out, he turned to watch as his nemesis busied himself with ripping out yet another control panel, most likely to open the door that had to have been the reason of their stop. "I'm too tired and too much in pain for your stupid games, space boy. Just… _Enlighten_ me on where we are."

The Irken took the time to spare a glare at the human, not liking the hint of tired sarcasm that had dripped into the words he had been addressed. For someone who complained about his unwillingness to cooperate, his rival wasn't helping to make things much easier. "This is the main laboratory of the ship," he explained, his tone carrying a mixture of reluctance and impatience. His brows knotted together as he pulled at the wires, trying to focus on what he needed to do to get the door open. He was still too pissed to ask for assistance. "While you were taking your time getting us out of that stinky cell, Zim managed to download a partial map of this level. There are…things of interest in here. One of the ship's central terminals, for example. If we gain access to that, we'll be able to find the quickest route to the hangar."

The teen eyed the alien, his lips curling up with a hint of sick pleasure as he watched him failing in his task for a few moments. It would have been fun to just stay there and see his nemesis getting more and more frustrated, but time was too precious in that moment, so he forced himself off the wall and slapped the Invader's hands away. "At least I managed to get us out," he talked back, even if his tone lacked the hostility that his words would have normally carried. His amber eyes narrowed suspiciously as they briefly moved away from panel to studying the Invader's face. "You are planning something, aren't you, Zim?"

The smirk that opened on the Irken's face looked even more crazed against the unhealthy pallor of his skin, the effect enhanced by the way in which those magenta orbs darkened with bloodthirsty, cold rage. "You don't really think that I would let these hideous creatures get away with what they have _dared_ , do you, Dib?"

The human couldn't help the shiver that ran down his spine. At times Zim's erratic and mostly idiotic behaviours and ideas made it easy to forget how twisted and cruel he could be. In that very moment, he was immensely glad that he wasn't in those aliens' place or even just a possible target of his nemesis's revenge. He had the sick feeling that whatever the other was planning was something their captors wouldn't have forgotten any time soon. That assuming that they would have survived it.

"Fair enough," he nodded, moving his eyes away to focus back on his task and doing his best to hide his own uneasiness. They might have been working together, but they would have still been enemies at the end of the day. He refused to show more weakness than the one he couldn't hide. He couldn't trust his rival not to use it against him.

Zim just gave a light shrug as an answer, his gaze turning calculating and lost in the void in front of him, his mind clearly occupied with whatever he was scheming, and Dib let the eerie silence of the corridor fill the space between them, until the door slid open with a quiet hiss a few long moments later. The two exchanged a slightly sickened glance that for once felt more like an act than a meant gesture and then the alien half-carried the human past the threshold of the laboratory.

Just as the corridor, the large room was dimly lit and even colder than the cell had been. Most of the lights seemed to come from the computer consoles set against the walls, the otherwise black screens covered with greenish, flooding alien words and numbers. Dib felt his skin crawling as goosebumps raised on it, and not just because of the icy air. His amber eyes danced for a moment on the displays, the lenses of his glasses reflecting their disquieting hue, but they didn't stay fixed on them enough to decipher the streams of data that were flowing across them. His attention was quickly caught by the forest of tanks that occupied the middle of the room and the sharp intake of breath and the sudden spiking of his heartbeat instantly told him that Zim was feeling the same horror that the spectacle in front of them had evoked in his chest.

The cylindrical glass structures were filled with a slowly gurgling liquid that seemed to spread a sick, yellowish fluorescence and the most disturbing shadows all around. What had caused the teen's stomach, and the Irken's spooch too, to knot painfully, though, had been the sight of what was _inside_ the tanks. At first Dib found himself squinting, trying and almost failing to make sense of the forms that were floating in that mockery of a primordial ooze, as his mind slowly filled with a sense of freezing dread. Pieces of what he could only guess having once been living organisms were held up by thin, metallic tubes, some of which were pumping either liquids or electricity inside the parts keeping them moving and functioning, almost as if they had been _alive_.

That, however, was just the least worst. Next to the organs and _slices_ of organisms, there were bigger… _things_. There was no other term to define those masses, or at least no other terms that Dib was willing to use to describe them. Some had eyes that seemed to move, following him and Zim as they made their way among the tanks, and some had seemed to move too, even if the human had refused to consider such a possibility. His mind was already far too overloaded by the macabre show to bear the thought that there could be any trace of life and consciousness inside those twisted, agonising forms.

There was a part of him that wanted to close his eyes and not to look, to shield himself from that perverse monstrosities, but the truth was that he couldn't tear his eyes away from them, no matter how much his guts contorted with revulsion. Most anatomical details evaded him, since they belonged to alien species far too different from his own to be recognisable, but others, in their oddity, were far too familiar. Intestines connected to mouths and eye sockets. Hearts that beat outside the bodies that should have contained and shoved in other cavities, artificially created. What looked like brains or nervous structured brutally sewed on ulcerated, half rotten skin. Lungs that filled and emptied in full view, pumping some weirdly coloured liquid in the flesh and the orifices of the wrecked bodies they were attached to. The eyes that stared back at him everywhere he looked, floating in the culture medium or pleading from where they were glued on the wrong surface.

Dib gulped dryly, his heart now pounding in his ears too loudly for the eerie silence of the room. The general impression he was getting from the scene was that none of those things belonged where they were, not only because almost not a single organ seemed to be where it should have, but also because the anatomy of those masses simply _didn't fit_. It was almost as if the pieces had once been part of different beings, from different species too.

The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks and his gaze instantly snapped to the wires that were connecting him and the Irken. The cables looked even more threatening, as they were now, reflecting the yellowish light of the tanks and glowing ruby red themselves. Was it _that_ what their captors were planning for them?!

His amber eyes moved up again, but this time they weren't captured by the atrocities displayed before them, but instead they sought Zim's magenta orbs, finding them wide open as his own had to be, staring at the glass containers with horrified fascination. There were both fight and awe, repulsion and allure in the Invader's gaze and Dib found himself swallowing again as he couldn't help thinking that he himself felt that same odd mixture of feelings whenever he looked at or thought about his nemesis. The Irken was a monster, of a similar kind of the ones that had captured them, and yet he couldn't stop himself from being captivated by him, in a way that made at the same time his stomach contort with disgust and his mind race with excitement.

"Are they…?" He breathed out as they finally stepped away from the tanks, his voice fading before he could finish the question. He wasn't even sure of what he had wanted to say. Alive? Aware? _Real_? All of those? Or none?

"Some of them are probably still living." Zim's curt answer cut through the silence as a sharp slap, dissipating part of the heavy atmosphere that had settled on them. The alien's shoulders were tense and he was trying hard not to glance back at the frightening experiments, even if he could feel them digging holes in his PAK and back. "But I can't tell how aware of the fact they are. And I think you do _not_ want to know, Dib."

The teen nodded slightly, even if not without a hint of reluctance. The truth was that, while he knew that he would have hated to know, there was a part of him that longed to hear that answer, just as it wanted a reply to all the other questions that had suddenly crowded his thoughts. Did Zim know what had been done to those beings? Could he recognise them and their parts? Did he know what it might have felt, being torn apart and stitched together once again? Did Irkens ever do anything of the sort to their captives? Did they experiment on them so cruelly, for the sake of science or for their personal, twisted pleasure? He had the sickening feeling that the answer to all those queries was affirmative and the awareness didn't help the paralysing nausea that was starting to numb his limbs once again.

Oblivious to the direction that Dib's thoughts were taking, Zim more or less dumped the human against the border of the console, close enough not to risk pulling the wires again, and then turned his attention towards the complicated keyboards set in front of the main screen. His mouth curled down in a frown as he knotted his brows together, trying to focus on hacking into the system. His PAK was adapting to manage two set of data at the same time and the fact that he and Dib were sharing a similar state of mind definitely helped in that sense, but the different inputs still made it hard for him to fully concentrate.

Muttering a curse in his native language under his breath, he set his claws on the keyboard, raising his magenta orbs towards the screen to follow the data that were still running along it for a few moments before he started to hit the buttons, entering the streams of codes that should have granted him access to the system. The kind of technology those aliens used had some similarities with the Irken one, even if Zim would have never admitted that the race of their captors was actually as advanced as his own. His programming rebelled against the mere possibility and the affront that had been done to him just pushed him to loathe those beings even more. No matter how fine and sophisticated that tech could be, he would have cracked it and turned it against its creators.

After a few seconds of awkward stumbling, his fingers started to purposely fly on the keyboard and the display sat in front of them lit up more brightly, the blackness and the greenish shade of the flooding characters being replaced by the white lines of the three-dimensional blueprint of the ship. The vessel was bigger than the Invader had expected and they were more or less stuck in the core of it, but there was a system of plasma ducts that would have significantly shortened their escape route. He just needed to redirect the plasma to avoid that they ended up roasted and they should have had a good chance to reach the hangar where their ships were.

"Dib-human," he started, turning to look at his forced companion. "Are you still in possess of that rudimental mean of communication you humans are so fond of? I need you use it and take a picture of the map. I could connect my PAK to the ship system and download the information, but considering out current… _situation_ , that might not be wise."

Dib blinked, confused by the definition that the alien had offered him, his mind taking perhaps a moment too long to realise that his nemesis was talking about his mobile phone. In other circumstances, he would have rolled his eyes and taunted the Irken about the fact that once again he was lacking the most basic English words, but in that moment he was still too shaken by the real life nightmare they were living through to even just think of a sharp comeback. So, instead, he patted the sides of his jeans and checked the pockets of his coat, numbly looking for the device he had been asked about. He eventually found it in his left inner pocket and waved it slightly in Zim's direction, before snapping a picture of the blueprint without a word.

He took a moment to check that the photo had come out decently, then his amber eyes found the alien's sharp features again. "Can we go now?" He asked, shooting the briefest glance at the tanks behind them. The eerie atmosphere of the room was starting to get to him and he could feel himself approaching the verge of a mental breakdown. All the fears and the questions crowding his mind were starting to make his head spin and his stomach contort with waves of growing nausea. Moreover, the longer they spent in the same place, the higher the risk of being found was.

"Zim isn't done yet," the Invader curtly answered, shooting the human one final glare before turning his attention back to the screen, his fingers finding the keyboard once again. "There are two more things I must do, before we can make our escape."

It was Dib's turn to frown, the urge to talk back and protest surging inside him, but he bit his tongue to prevent himself from spitting out the words that had already begun to form in his throat. Starting a fight would have led them nowhere and it surely wouldn't have helped them getting out of there faster. As much as he hated every single second he was forced to spend inside those metal walls, he had to grip at the very few, very feeble tendrils of control and calm he had left.

"Just…Just hurry up, alright?" He ended up saying through his teeth, shoving back both his anxiety and the jittery irritation that kept growing inside his chest. "This place gives me the creeps." That was definitely the understatement of the millennium. And he had carefully avoided to mention the confusing, contrasting feelings that the fact that they were currently literally linked together was making him experience.

Zim shot the teen a brief, unimpressed side glare. "You…How's that filthy but accurate human saying?…Ah, yes. You cannot rush _perfection_ , Dib-stink," he claimed in a tone that was almost smug, despite their current situation. The smirk that curled his lips at the eyeroll he got as an answer carried the same sentiment, even if it quickly faded back into a focused frown as he returned his whole attention, or at least as much of it he could spare, to the screen.

His claws were less tentative as they found the keyboard, their shaking no longer due to hesitation but only to the physical discomfort he was enduring and to the efforts he was making to keep both him and his nemesis together. There was a hint of numbness spreading to the ends of his limbs, which made precise and quick movements harder than they should have been, and the uncomfortable feeling kept bugging him, no matter how hard he tried to shove it in the back of his mind. Luckily, accessing to the control of the plasma system was easy now that he had hacked into the main server, so it took him just a couple of minutes to redirect the fluid and activate the cooling mechanism, so that the boiling radioactive substance wouldn't been flooding in the ducts they would need to use to reach the hangar.

Achieving his second goal was trickier. Not that Zim was surprised. After all, what he was trying to do could have potentially been lethal for every living organism on the ship. No wonder that there were plenty of password protected levels he had to go through before succeeding in obtaining the needed authorisations. A new, wider and much darker smirk opened on his face, as his magenta eyes shone eerily in the dim light of the laboratory. Sweet, sweet revenge.

The Invader turned his head in the human's direction, ready to inform him that they could take their leave, but, before he could even just open his mouth, a loud alarm suddenly exploded in the room and made them both jump out of their skin, its blaring sound filling the space between every atom of air.

Dib winced as the wires were pulled by their sudden movement, even if the noise that escaped his throat was swallowed by the roar that was clashing into his eardrums so hard that he feared that they would have started to _bleed_ , if the alarm hadn't ceased soon enough. He was vaguely aware that there were words being shouted by an artificial voice too, in a language that he shouldn't have been able to understanding, but that he did. However, he was too busy covering his ears and panting as his heart beat like crazy, reflecting the rush of adrenaline, or whatever Irkens had in the place of it, that had to be rushing into Zim's body. What he grasped of it, though, was enough to understand that they were in deep troubles. _Intruders_.

"What have you done, you alien moron?!" He yelled, as loud as he could, even if he wasn't sure that he would have managed to make his nemesis hear him. His throat and lungs hurt like hell at the effort and he could taste blood, but he was far too agitated to care, just as he couldn't bring himself to pay attention to how hard breathing was. All he could focus on was the pain in his head and the anger that was starting to boil in his veins. Once again it was all his rival's fault.

"I was trying to set a timer for the release of a poisonous gas in the air conditioning system!" Zim screeched, frantically hitting the buttons, in the attempt of turning off the alarm. His antennae were pressed against his skull, trying in vain to shield the sensitive appendages from the strong vibrations. Yet other damages that his PAK would have to take care off. His eyes raced along the data that were flooding on the screen. His countdown was still active. "And I did it!"

"Yes, and you triggered an alarm in the process!" The teen shot back, breathless, throwing his hands in the air. "And…And you most likely signed our death sentence! Curse you, Zim!"

The Irken let out a low growl as he slammed his hand down on yet another button. It seemed to be the right one because the ungodly sound was cut off as abruptly as it had erupted. "As if you could have done better in Zim's place!" He hissed out, and his enraged words echoed, seeming out of place in the once again too quiet space. His antennae hurt, just as the human's ears had to be, and he felt like his head was being shaken at sonic speed, making everything around him blurred on the edges. "Without me you'd be already _dead_." His eyes narrowed, as his tone filled with sharp cruelty. "Don't forget it, filthy worm."

This time the rage flared up inside Dib so abruptly that he couldn't have stopped it even if he had wanted to. Saying that the alien had hit a nerve was an understatement and, before he could realise it, his hands had found the front of his nemesis's torn uniform, pulling at it without paying attention to the wires that stuck out of the Irken's body. A bit of pink blood dripped on his skin as he shoved the other against the edge of the console, hot against his cool flesh, and he half smirked, half snarled at the pained hissed that Zim let out.

"Listen to me, space scum," he slowly spelled out. His voice was still hoarse, he was still panting because the Invader was, but his tone still managed to sound eerie, just as his face was in the dim greenish light of the lab, pale and sweated and marked with dark circles under his eyes. He struggled to keep his words steady and felt a spark of satisfaction as he mostly managed to achieve that effect. "This is all _your_ fault. You dragged us here, you got us caught. You might be keeping me alive, but that's the least you can do, considering that this is all on _you_." He inched closer, wincing as the wires shifted slightly inside his flesh, but he gritted his teeth and held his ground. "If you get us…turned into one of those… _things_ , I swear, Zim, that I'll make our remaining time together worse than the worst nightmare you can imagine!"

Zim snarled, the sound as low as the human's voice had been, as his fingers wrapped around his nemesis's wrists, too tightly for comfort. His magenta orbs were reduced to two thin blood-red cracks and they glinted menacingly, catching the sick glow of the tanks behind them. "How _dare_ you! Filthy, low, worthless creature!" He growled, his claws sinking slightly into the teen's flesh. "I'm an Irken Invader! I am _ZIM_! You have no right to speak to me in such a manner! No right to pin the blame of your weakness on _me_! You will regret every single word you spoke in your pathetic existence!"

Their eyes were glued to each other, golden amber, almost liquid with the heat of the rage that filled it, fixed into just as fiery, deep, dark magenta orbs, identical, furious expression on their faces. Their chests raised and fell in sync, following the rapid flooding of their ragged breaths, and in the otherwise unbroken silence of the laboratory it was almost too easy to imagine the simultaneous pumping of the human's heart and of the alien's insides.

"I'd like to see you try," Dib spat out, his voice still quiet, even if it was dripping hostility now. He instinctively inched closer, threateningly, and his forehead ended up pressed hard against Zim's as the Irken mirrored his movements.

"I will take the greatest pleasure in dismembering you, Dib-stink," the Invader shot back without missing a beat, his tone mimicking once again the one that his rival had used. He gritted his teeth, a ferocious click leaving his throat. "If you think that what these barbaric creatures have done to us is horrible, I will show you something worse than that cursed monster dimension of doom! Not even your sister-unit will be able to recognise you or your DNA once Zim will be…"

His sentence was cut off without warning but a metallic clang that resonated in the corridor just outside the laboratory. The Invader's head snapped in the direction of the door, on the other side of the room. He couldn't see it, because it was covered by the tanks and their nightmarish contents, but his expression still paled with a hint of fear and nervousness while his antennae lowered back against his skull from where they had shot up and his shoulders hunched. That noise could mean only troubles. There was something approaching their location and, considering that he had just triggered an alarm, it could only be the response of the security system to his false step.

"What…What was that?" Dib stuttered next to him, his grip on the Irken's uniform loosening. He had jumped a bit at the sudden noise and he hadn't needed to see the worried unease that had grown in his rival's expression to know that there was nothing good coming for them. Gulping slightly, he moved his eyes back on the alien. "Zim?"

"Can you _run_ , Dib-thing?" Zim asked back, ignoring the question he had been more or less addressed. Soon enough his nemesis would have seen it with his own eyes. All the muscles in his body were tensed, but under the hint of anxiety that still made his gaze restless his mind was rushing and calculating. "And with this I don't mean stumbling and falling on that huge head of yours. I mean running as if your pathetic existence depended on it. Because it will."

Despite the tension that was heaving the atmosphere, the human rolled his eyes. "Will everyone ever leave my head alone?" He grumbled under his breath, both his voice and expression colouring with irritation before the apprehension came back at full force.

He took a small step back, finally disentangling his fingers from the torn cloth of the Invader's uniform. He glanced down at himself, taking in once again the sight of his own shred, blood-stained T-shirt and especially of the wires that stuck out of his flesh. Even if he had been in his best shape, which he was _not_ considering how numb, dizzy and unstable he felt, moving quickly without getting hurt while being sewed to someone else would have been almost impossible. It would have meant moving in perfect sync with the other person and, while his and Zim's breathing and heartbeats might have been forcefully synchronised, their actions and thoughts were anything but. All they would have got out of trying would have been pulling at the cables and, if not getting at least one of them severely wounded or killed, being captured. Not to mention that, even if he would have never admitted it out aloud, the risk for him of stumbling and falling face down of the floor was very high in his current poor physical and emotional conditions. However, what other alternatives could they have?

"I…" He stopped before he could even start the sentence, reluctance closing his throat. He knew that he would have been mocked and insulted if he had claimed that he couldn't even run for his life. He could easily imagine the taunts that would have left the alien's thin lips in a sardonic tone, as cutting as the Irken's claws could be. In the dim, sick lights of the laboratory the satisfied glow of his nemesis's eyes would have looked even more unbearable.

The impulse to lie, just out of spite and for the sake of stubbornness, hit him hard, and he almost gave into it. However, a small but painful tug at the metal connected to his organs was enough to remind him in what kind of situation he was. He gritted his teeth, trying to push down his frustration. He didn't have a choice, if he wanted to have a chance at making it out alive. However, didn't mean that he would have been nice about it.

"Do I look like I'm in any shape to run at breakneck speed to flee some evil alien or whatever to you, alien scum?" He hissed out, sounding openly resentful even if his own eyes had started to dart in the direction of the door. "You can make all the stupid comments you want about how weak and pathetic humans are, but that won't help us getting out of here. So, let's not waste breath on fight and let's find a solution instead. Unless your amazingly _idiotic_ brain already has come up with one."

Zim let out a growl in answer, fisting his hands by his sides to prevent himself from turning that argument into a brawl. He would have regretted it, and dearly, because trying to have a fist fight while they were still connected would have hurt them both like hell. And, while he would have got a deep pleasure in seeing his rival in pain, he wouldn't have been able to enjoy it since he would have been agonising on the floor too. He would have to do with the satisfaction of knowing that Dib owed him his unworthy life for now.

"Luckily for you, yes, my _brilliant_ brain has already elaborated a strategy, while you were busy complaining," he spat out, raising his chin in a display of superiority. "So you should show some gratitude to your future overlord, you pitiful being."

"Maybe I'll stop claiming that your idea is stupid once I'll have seen that it actually _works_. But you won't get anything else from me," the teen readily talked back, his tone once again matching the contempt that had coloured the Invader's voice. "And I doubt that I'll do even just that, considering how usually…"

The rest of his words got stuck in his throat as he saw the spider legs emerging from his nemesis's PAK and his eyes widened as he was overwhelmed by a new rush of apprehension. Had Zim decided that he wasn't worth the trouble? That he was nothing but a burden and that he preferred taking his chances at escaping on his own? The Irken wouldn't do that, after having just stated that he was trying to save his life…Would he? It was also to be said that the alien was anything but stable and he had never showed any regrets in changing his mind at the last minute, if he realised that another path suited his plans better and gave him more advantages than the one he had initially chosen to follow.

Fear crept in his stomach, its icy tendrils making him shiver, and Dib's first instinct was to take a step back, but he soon realised that he couldn't go too far, unless he wanted to end himself with his own hands. Painfully and bloodily. "Z…Zim, what are you…?" He tried to say, not caring if his voice had audibly shaken.

The Invader's mouth curled up in an ugly smirk and he lifted one of his metallic limbs. If they had had more time, he would have dragged that act on for longer, just to see the hint of nervous alarm in his rival's eyes turning into fully budded, blind terror. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that the first hypothesis that the human's mind had formulated was that he was about to end his pathetic existence. That was exactly how it should be between them. Dib needed to _fear_ him, even if he stubbornly kept standing in his way. He had to be aware of what he could have done to him, if he had chosen to.

Unfortunately, though, there was no time for those mind games now. They had to get out of there and reach the entrance of the main plasma ducts before they could be trapped or, even worse, caught again. If that had happened, they wouldn't have had another chance to break free as they had done. His eyes narrowed in a frown at the thought and his hands snapped forward, unceremoniously grabbing the frozen teen by the sides and pulling him forward, closing the space between them once again as his PAK legs lifted them both up. He would have needed at least one free arm, so the foolish ape had better do his part and keep himself attached to him on his own.

Dib's mind didn't have the time to register what was happening and all he could do was stumbling forwards when he was pulled, his limbs instinctively attaching themselves to the closest thing they found when the ground disappeared from under his feet. Namely his nemesis's body. The position was _awkward_ , to say the least, and not just because of the once again forced closeness. He was taller than the Irken, even if not too much, and so he had to stay uncomfortably hunched to be able to wrap his legs around the alien's waist and his arms around the other's shoulders. The wires were bent between them, pressing in part against his neck, and their hard surface was anything but pleasant against his skin. Maybe it was better than being slaughtered, but it definitely wasn't something he would have willingly agreed to do in other circumstances.

"You could have given him a bit of a warning, alien scum!" He exclaimed, his voice lacing with both relief and annoyance. He didn't want to admit that he had got a big scare, even if they both knew it. "So, _this_ is your brilliant idea?" Sarcasm heavily joined the other emotions in his tone. "If you wanted to snuggle me so badly, you could have just asked."

"Zim didn't want to do anything of the sort!" The Invader snapped back, horror echoing in his each every word. He had clearly missed the mockery in the human's last sentence and he scrambled with the need of justifying himself. How could his nemesis even consider such a thing?! "I would never allow an inferior creature like you to leech on my almighty body if it wasn't strictly necessary!" The space between his eyes and his mouth creased. "Especially considering how much you _stink_."

Dib opened his mouth to protest and return the insult, but, before he could spell out even just a word, the metallic noise echoed in the corridor once again, louder, closer. The two froze in their spots, their fight instantly forgotten as the hiss of the door sliding open cut through the thick silence that reigned over the lab. A few seconds ticked away without a single sound echoing in the tense atmosphere or a movement that could be perceived. Everything was still, _too_ still, until the moment when reality seemed to shatter into pieces.

It all happened far too fast for Dib's mind to be able to register it. One moment he had been staring in the direction of the door, as if his eyes had been able to see through the tanks that hid the other side of the room from his field of view, and the next Zim's PAK legs were dragging them aside with an abrupt leap, as a rain of glass fragments exploded all around them. Some of the yellowish liquid that had been filling the tanks reached their skin and clothes and the human found himself struggling with a strong wave of nausea. The smell that had soaked the air was too intense for his senses, acrid as only certain disinfectants could be. It seemed to attack his nostrils and throat, threatening to erode them, and for a second he flashed himself drowning in the blood that might have filled his own lungs if it had.

His grip on Zim's body tightened reflexively, his fingers and legs seeking support and shelter in the Invader's much more resilient body, and he felt oddly comforted when the alien's own arm wrapped more firmly around his torso. His nemesis's solution hadn't been _that_ bad after all. If he had been standing on his feet when the attack had come, he wouldn't have been able to avoid whatever had caused the glass to shatter in millions of pieces.

A low click brought the teen back to the present. He didn't need to know the Irken language to understand that it had been a heavy curse. Zim's tone had been self-explanatory and it had also brought a knot in his stomach. Slowly, he turned his head back towards the entrance of the laboratory and his breath would have hitched if he had still been in control of his lungs. The wet floor was littered with the organs and pieces of biologic material that had been held in the tanks till before the explosion. Some of the _things_ had been smashed, reduced to an even more unrecognisable, shapeless mass.

However, what attracted the human's attention the most weren't the eerie, revolting remains of their captors' sick experiments, but what stood in the background, past the large yellowish pool that now separated them from their escape route. At first his brain had a very hard time to make out what exactly he was looking at. He counted at least fifteen figures standing in the mid darkness of the laboratory, the dull light casting odd shadows over them and making them look even more spectral. Their limbs were slumped, as the ones of puppets whose threads had been cut off, and their flesh seemed covered in blotches, the colours going from dirty snow white to brown, from a sick shade of purple to bice green. The most disquieting trait, however, were their eyes. Huge, glowing, empty ruby orbs that appeared at the same time to stare into nothingness and to be unshakably locked on them.

"What…What are those things?" He stuttered out, his grip on the Invader's body tightening even more. He could guess that they had to be part of some kind of twisted security system, the same that his rival had triggered while hacking into the ship main server, but what he couldn't conceive was why everything in that cursed place had to be so damn _creepy_.

Zim swallowed slightly, his magenta orbs still locked on the ghostly figures. Irkens had better eyesight than humans did, especially in the dark, so he could see what Dib couldn't whether because there wasn't enough light or because his panicked state was preventing him from noticing that detail. The different colours on the beings' skin weren't blotches. Each of them was a piece of rotting _flesh_ , sewed together with the others, to cover what he suspected being the metallic interiors of an android. And he was ready to bet that the chunks of flesh came from the same beings whose organs were currently splattered all over the floor.

"You don't want to know, Dib-thing," he claimed in a strangled voice, as his spooch contorted in both horror and disgust. His eyes glided over the figures, nervously looking for the weapons that they had to be holding. Considering the damage they had done to the room, he had no doubt that they could have had ended them easily, even if he had the feeling that their captors would have preferred giving them a slower and more painful death. "What you need to know is that you must hold onto Zim, because you do _not_ want those… _things_ to catch us."

The teen could do nothing but nodding. It hardly happened that he and Zim agreed on something, since they usually disagreed with each other just for the sake of it, but their current situation made reality impossible to deny. He opened his mouth, most likely to make some sort of comment, but the words were instantly forgotten as the PAK legs dragged them away from the spot where they had been, crushing his chest against the Irken's in the process.

Agony erupted along his nerves and from the way in which his breathing sped up he could tell that Zim had been hurt too. The smell of blood mixed with the nauseating one that was filling the air, but he couldn't tell if it was his own or his rival's. His mind was almost paralysed, torn between pain and terror, and he had never been gladder of not having the control of the situation. They would have got severely hurt, if not killed, if he had been the one handling their desperate escape. He had been through a lot, but there was something in that particular misadventure that was putting a strain on his resilience. Maybe it was the fucked up implications of being sewn to Zim, or perhaps the nightmarish sights he had witnessed since after coming back to his senses. Maybe it was the fear that they might not make it out alive, or perhaps the nauseating disgust that held him by his throat. He had no idea. What he knew was that his head was a mess and that his decisional abilities were severely compromised.

Zim cursed in his mother language, loud and heavy, even if part of the words that left his throat were covered by the sound of the lasers they had just dodged impacting against the smooth surface of the wall. Those creepy machines were quick and the fact that his PAK wasn't working at its full capacity didn't help him moving as smoothly and fast as he wished he was. Their opponents were still standing between them and the door and seemed to have no intention to move. They would have to create their way past them.

He gritted his teeth, snatching the laser gun that had emerged from the device on his back. He wasn't going to let himself being captured. He would have chosen self-destructing over being reduced as their predecessors had. And Dib would have died with him, deprived of the support of what was keeping his vital organs working, so the other couldn't have complained about him deciding to leave him behind. However, given the choice, he would have preferred getting away with his life and that meant that they didn't have much time. If they had still been inside the ship when the timer he had set had reached the zero, they might have met a very ugly ending anyway.

He hesitated for one more split second and then shoved the weapon against Dib's chest. "Shoot them. Or in their general direction. I don't care. Just…Try to blow them up," he ordered curtly, his eyes narrowing tightly. He was already starting to think that their desperate attempt of escape was pure madness, but he couldn't allow himself to doubt. Every second was precious, ever breath could make the difference between victory and failure.

He caught the sight of his nemesis opening his mouth, most likely to protest, but he didn't give the human the time to speak a syllable. He launched himself forward, dashing straight towards the spectral figures, in a rush that was as reckless as it was desperate. Three of the beings detached themselves from the group, dashing forward to meet them halfway, moving far too fast than they should have been able to do considering how uncoordinated their movements were.

Right before they could clash, one of Zim's spider legs raised, shooting forwards, quick and lethal even despite not being as precise as it usually was. It sunk straight into the chest of one of the figures, passing it from part to part and tearing a terrible scream out of it. The sound barely had the time to echo, because the metallic limb almost immediately slammed the now limp body into the being next to it, before impaling it too. Sparks of electricity and the stink of rotten flesh filled the air as the Invader dropped the two artificial corpses, magenta orbs moving around in the search of the third figure. He caught a glimpse of a movement with the corner of his eye and he found himself lifting his head just in time to see the thing being about to swoop down over them. There were curved, sharp blades protruding from the tips of its fingers and its arms were raised, ready to strike.

The Irken's eyes widened in a way that would have been comical if the circumstances had been different, limbs frozen in surprise as he his mind realised that he wouldn't have been fast enough to stop the attack. He could have tried to shield himself, but the chances of success were slim. The creature would have wounded him and at that point they would have been captured again and…

The panicked trail of his thoughts was interrupted by an explosion, close enough to blind and deafen him for several long second. A rain of stinky organic material and pieces of metal followed, covering both him and the human he was holding and sending his spooch to contort once again. Zim blinked, trying to clear his sight, and he found Dib with an arm still raised, gun held in his hand too tightly, panting. The teen's already pale skin had taken a greenish hue that was anything but healthy and he was shaking, but there was a determined frown on his face.

"Get…Get us out of here, space boy," the human stuttered, lowering his arm as he fought a wave of nausea. He would have refused to eat meat for who knows how long once he would have got back to Earth. He was sure that he couldn't have looked at a steak without remembering that acrid, disgusting smell for a long while.

Despite himself, the Irken smirked. He wouldn't have admitted it, not even to himself, but his nemesis's prompt reaction had impressed him, and in a very positive way. Of course, that was a thought that he would have forgotten as soon as things would have gone back to normal, just as he kept denying the fact that they were a good team.

"You aren't completely useless after all," he sentenced and his shark grin widened at the glare he received. "And for this reason the mighty Zim will grant your wish without wasting any more time."

"Yeah, yeah. Stop insulting me and just do it already!" Dib shot back, adjusting the grip of his free arm around the alien's shoulders. He didn't want his rival to accidentally drop him in the heat of the escape. That could have been quite problematic. "I'll make sure you don't get outsmarted."

Zim let out an irritated hiss at the last comment, but he forced himself not to argue back as he caught a movement coming from the rows of their opponents. He would have made the human pay for having spoken such disrespectful words later, together with all the rest of his misdemeanours. Now they had other priorities. However, his claws still sank in the other's side, hard enough to cause him to wince, as his PAK legs made them surge forward.

As expected, the ghostly figures tried to stop them from reaching the door. Lasers and blades shot in their directions, avoiding the vital spots, but still aiming for targets that, if hit, would have incapacitated them. Zim managed to dodge most of the attacks, even if he still gained a few burns from their opponents' weapons and a deep cut on his free arm. Focusing on trying to keep them shielded from harm made his attempts at fighting back clumsy and not very effective, but luckily for him Dib seemed to be able to fill in for him under that aspect. There was a bleeding gash on the human's shoulder, but he was almost unaware of it, just as he seemed to have become unaffected by the unbearable stench of putrefaction and by the pieces of dead flesh that had got stuck in his clothes, hair and on his skin. Adrenaline was pumping high in his veins, keeping him sharp and focused on his task and blocking everything else out.

Eventually, the two managed to reach the lab door and Zim, after shoving the latest corpse he had stabbed in the general direction of what was left of the group of beings, turned around and rushed out, the spider legs carrying them along the corridor at breakneck speed. The access to the plasma ducts should have been in a room not too far from where they currently were, but he could already hear the swooshing sound of the figures chasing after them and Dib's silent curses as he tried to shoot were a confirmation of the fact that it was hardly over yet.

They took an abrupt turn in another, smaller corridor that opened on their right and the Invader didn't hesitate to launch them inside the right door, once they had reached it. His claws dashed for the control panel, tearing it out and effectively blocking the entrance. It wouldn't have been enough to stop their pursuers, but it should have slowed them down enough to allow them to slip inside the ducts. He didn't think that they would have managed to lose them, even once inside the pipes, but he hoped that they could have bought themselves enough time to make it to the hangar without getting caught.

"Wait a moment, Zim!"

Dib's voice echoed in the empty room, breaking the silence that had been disturbed only by their synchronised ragged breaths. His expression was tense but resolute and his eyes weren't dull despite the evident tiredness that coloured them.

"What now, Earth stink!" The Irken instantly attacked, his head snapping in front of him to meet his nemesis's gaze. He couldn't fathom what the other might have wanted in such a crucial moment, when they were struggling to cross the line between freedom and deadly imprisonment. "This isn't the right moment for your foolishness!"

The human gritted his teeth in frustration, but he forced himself not to react to the provocation. As much as he would have loved to punch the space idiot in the face, they were already running out of time. The temptation of diving in their usual heating bantering was strong, but his survival instinct was stronger. Still, he wished that he could have at least sucked in a deep breath to help himself calming down.

"Shut up and listen to me. I got an idea," he stated instead, ignoring the mocking expression that had surfaced on the alien's face at the second statement. He would have never got over how childishly overconfident his nemesis was. No matter how much time would have passed, that kind of behaviours would have kept getting on his nerves. "Those things will chase us in the ducts too, if we don't stop them. They are surely…programmed to know their way around this ship better than us, so if they guess where we're going they'll cut us off."

The Irken let out a low sound. He couldn't see where his rival's speech was going and he had even less patience than he usually did in that moment. Which said a lot. "Zim knows this! Why are you stating the obvious?! Stop beating around the tree, human!"

"Around the _bush_ ," Dib automatically corrected, rolling his eyes. He couldn't believe that the alien was still so _bad_ with English, after all the time he had spent on Earth. No one should have been able to be brilliant and utterly _dumb_ at the same time. "Whatever. If you let me speak I'll tell you." He shot the other a meaningful look, taking a split second to enjoy how reluctant his nemesis looked as he nodded, before continuing. "If we redirect the plasma in this room and flood it while they're inside, we'll get rid of most of them." He turned to look at the console right under the main access to the ducts. The foreign characters on the screen screamed of a very hard challenge, even with the Invader's mind translating for his eyes, but he still thought that it would have offered them a better chance of success. "Let me try."

Zim rapidly looked around, forcing himself to consider the idea even if his first instinct had been to reject it for the mere reason that it was _Dib's_. His orbs narrowed, a thoughtful expression morphing on his face. The room they were in was much smaller than the laboratory, perfect to trap someone in. The plasma would have flooded inside fast and filled a good part of it even if the door had been still opened. Whoever would have been inside would have been _liquefied_ and then it would have taken a long amount of time to make the space accessible to what would have been left of the pursuers once again. It could have worked, he decided. The human was right. It was indeed worth a try.

"Fine. Let's indulge in this idea of yours, Dib," he agreed in the end, even if it was evident that every single word he spelled was costing him a lot. In that very moment something hit the surface of the door from the outside, causing the metal to bend. He tensed, fear colouring his eyes for a moment. "You have two minutes. Not a second more."

Dib swallowed slightly, nervousness making his skin crawl as he glanced towards the entrance of the room, but he instantly turned his attention to his task when Zim more or less dumped him in front of the console. His fingers felt numb and his head too heavy, his mouth still tasted like blood and his stomach was twisting in pain, but he still tried his best to ignore the uncomfortable sensations, focusing only on the data that flooded on the screen. He kept jumping every time the door was hit, but he forced himself not to avert his eyes from the display. Earlier when they were still in the lab, the Irken had for the most redirected the plasma floods along secondary nets of pipes, but since the room they were in seemed to be the way point of that level of the ship, so all the conduits converged there, in some way. All he had to do to reach his goal would have been inverting the direction of the flow.

A rush of excitement washed over him at the realisation and his exhausted eyes sparkled lively, in deep contrast with the bags under them, as he rushed to key in the necessary commands. The system put up a bit of resistance, especially when it came to hack past the security control, but in the end it confirmed that the operation was being carried out. For the first time in a long time, he felt glad that he had more or less unwillingly assisted his father in the labs in the last year or so. Working there he had learnt some tricks that had turned out to be very useful.

"Done!" He claimed, sounding almost _hysterically_ victorious, turning to look at Zim. "You see? I told you that…"

"Whatever. Let's go," the Irken cut him off, roughly lifting him up agian and hitting the button to open all the mouths of all the ducts.

The wild flow of incandescent plasma flooded in in the same moment when the door of the room gave in, hitting the figures that had rushed in even before the metal could hit the floor. The tips of Zim's PAK legs barely avoided the wave, leaving the ground less than a second before it was covered by the boiling liquid. The surge of heat still reached them, spreading a burning sensation all over their skin and under their clothes.

The two found themselves crumpled in the very small space of the duct, Dib basically wrapped around Zim's front while the Irken was kept lifted by his metallic limbsThe alien's arms were wounded tightly around the teen's torso, to help him not falling down, and they were both wearing the same troubled expression. There was no time to adjust, though. They would have rested once out of that nightmarish spaceship.

The air inside the pipes was too hot and thick for comfort and it took less than a minute for the human to start sweating profusely. The sound of the spider legs stabbing into the metal walls echoed too loudly and made his head spiral down even more in the numbness that was hazing over his conscious thoughts. The only thing he was truly aware of was the rhythmical lifting and falling of Zim's chest, simultaneous with his own, and that seemed enough to lull him into an odd sense of security. His hand still trembled as he kept his arm awkwardly nestled between them, for his nemesis to be able to see the picture he had snapped to the blueprints of the ducts system. However, soon enough he became barely aware of that physical discomfort. He was struggling not to pass out, as his brain demanded oxygen he couldn't provide, but he also found that, for the first time since when he had woken up, he wasn't feeling scared. That had to be the sign that he was definitely bordering severe hypoxia.

From his part, Zim fought hard to keep going, even if he himself was having troubles coordinating his own movement. The sensation of stupor that Dib's body was sending him through their connection blurred his sight and scattered his thoughts, making it even harder for him to focus on everything he had to do. His arms and spine ached for having to bear the teen's weight and the burning of every patch of skin that entered in contact with his nemesis's sweaty flesh didn't help. There was blood dripping off both their bodies, pink and red lymph mixing together on the floor of the duct. The image carried a symbolism that his confused and exhausted mind rejected but that it couldn't chase away, making him wish that that endless trudging would end as soon as possible.

In the end, after three wrong turns and a graceless impact with a dead end, they dropped down in the dark quietness of the hangar. The coolness after the cramped heat they had been forced to bear made them both shiver, but Zim didn't allow them to stop to catch their breath. There were only two minutes left before the release of the gas and they still had to find the Voot. He had no intention of finding himself contorting on the floor as his skin and organs slowly liquefied, carrying him through the slowest agony one could have imagined. So he let go of the human, forcing him to stand on his own, and grabbed his arm, starting to pull him deeper inside the hangar.

The vast space was darker than the previous ones they had stumbled in. The machines and the ships parked there cast huge, odd, thicker shadows all around, feeding the paranoid tension that filled the air around them. Dib's legs were shaking and he had been forced to lean onto the Irken for support once again to be able to walk and keep up with his rival. His chest was still bleeding from the spots where the wires came out and he had suddenly become hyper aware of all the gashes and the bruises he had gained during their escape. His skin felt like it was on fire now and he couldn't help wondering if he had developed a fever or if his wounds had got infected because of all the rotten flesh and smelly liquids he had been showered in. Every step felt like a shot of agony he willingly administered himself, but he was painfully aware that stopping wasn't an option, and not just because Zim wouldn't have allowed it. The fear that those creatures could have come back haunted him, making him scan every shadow attentively.

He allowed his eyes to slid close for a moment, in the attempt to ease his splitting headache. The only thing that kept him going was the awareness that the Invader was as drained as he was and yet he didn't show any intention to slow down. The spirit of their rivalry pushed him to find energies he didn't have, just to spite the alien and prove him that humans weren't so weak as the other so often claimed. Moreover, he could hear the beeping coming from the device that his rival was using to track down the Voot intensifying with each step, which had to mean that they were getting closer and closer. He just needed to hold on a little longer.

Zim gritted his teeth for the umpteenth time as he felt Dib's weight sliding a bit more onto him. He was tempted to shove the human away and tell him to walk on his own, but he knew that his nemesis would have collapsed after a couple of steps and that wouldn't have done any good to any of them. His own body was protesting, threatening to give in, but he kept pushing himself, no matter how much every step hurt and how clearly he could feel the blood slowly flooding out of his wounds. He was supposed to be the unbeatable soldier, the superior being. He couldn't afford to show weakness, even when he was a poor state. However, when the Voot finally appeared in front of them, like an oasis of salvation in that hellish desert they had found themselves stuck in, he felt his spooch fluttering in deep, joyful relief and he even sped up his dragged steps, eager to be able to sit down in the relative safety of his ship.

Dib pretty much collapsed in the seat as soon as they were inside the cockpit, unable to keep himself up any longer, even if he was soon forced to shift a bit as Zim squeezed himself on it in turn. There was no other arrangement they could have used, considering the wires that still linked them. However, for once, none of them even took the time to spare the other a glare. They had too much in their hands to worry about being stuck in each other's personal space. Not to mention that they were still having a hard time believing that they had made it. The urge to get out of that ship, to be back in space to confirm that they weren't just living a delusion, was strong than any level of disgust and unwillingness they might have felt.

"Computer," the Invader called, his voice coming out hoarse with tiredness. "Contact Tak's ship and tell it to follow us. We are leaving this cursed place of doom!"

The teen blinked, caught off guard by the words, before his eyes widened as he realised that he had completely forgotten that his own spaceship was supposed to be there too. His brain had been so focused on getting him out of there that, if the Irken hadn't mentioned it, he most likely wouldn't have remembered about the Runner until they had reached Earth. He shot Zim an inquisitive glance, surprised that the Irken had chosen to retrieve it, even if it might have been a disadvantage for him in their war.

"Don't look at Zim like that, Earth beast," the alien stepped in, interrupting his thoughts as if he had read them while the Voot started to raise from the ground. He knew what kind of ideas had to have crossed his rival's mind and they were, of course, pure foolishness. He had his own perfectly _selfish_ and logical reasons to want to take the Runner with them. The fact that this would have also allowed the human to chase him in space during their future battles and have more chances to stand against him had nothing to do with his choice. "I'm not doing it for you. I refuse to hand Irken technology over to this filthy species. Especially after what they dared to do."

Despite the exhaustion that had crept all over his limbs, Dib cracked a teasing smile at the grumpy, dismissive answer. "Keep telling yourself that, space boy. Maybe you'll start believing it."

Zim let out an irritated click, not bothering to translate it into something understandable to a human, and unloaded his frustration by blowing a hole in the hull of the hangar to create an escape way for both ships. He would have added that taunt to the list of the insults his nemesis had thrown at him in the last few hours and dealt with them all once that mishap would have been properly fixed. His fingers tightened around the controls as he piloted the ship outside the hangar. If Dib thought that he could have got away with it, he would have soon found out how so very _wrong_ he was.

Both vehicles stopped once they were a few miles away from their captors' ship and the Invader turned his Voot around to be able to be able to look at it. He wasn't afraid that the aliens would have tried to chase them or to destroy them. By now his countdown had to have reached the zero, so they would have been too busy dealing with the gas he had realised in their ventilation systems to worry about anything else. The damage he had left behind would have made sure that the survivors would have thought about it twice before messing with an Irken once again.

A sharp, satisfied smirk slowly opened on his face as he leant back against the seat, his expression falling slightly when his shoulder inevitably bumped into Dib's. Now that the rush of the escape was starting to fade and that the pain was subsiding once again, he had no more excuses to tolerate that forced closeness without protests. His magenta eyes narrowed in a glare and he elbowed the human in the ribs, right above one of the wire, hard enough to make him wince, but not too much to cause a real damage.

"Why do you and your gargantuan head have to take so much space, Dib-stink?!" He hissed, trying to push the human away, but without much success. The only way he could have done it would have been by kicking his nemesis off the seat, but the wires weren't long enough and he had no intention of reopening his wounds _again_ just to be able to have the seat all for himself.

"Hey! First of all, for the umpteenth time, my head is _not_ big! And look who's talking!" Dib shot back, irritation flaring up despite the tiredness that laced his voice. No matter how drained he could have been, he would have never let Zim insult him without talking right back. Moreover, the bantering, while energy consuming, was the best way to start getting back a semblance of normalcy, even despite the cables that still protruded from their bodies. "You're tinier than me and yet you're taking more space than I am!"

The alien's eyes widened in astonishment, before heating up again with pure fury. "Who are you calling _short_?! You filthy, worthless creature!"

It was Dib's turn to smirk and the smug grin didn't fade even after the Invader had hit him again in the ribs. The pain was bearable and he was starting to feel less numb despite the blood loss. His mind was calmer and so were his breathing and heartbeat, which told him that the Irken wasn't as worked up as he wanted to appear. It was weird, having such a deep insight in his nemesis's moods, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as it had been when he had firstly realised what had happened. Not that he would have ever admitted it.

Zim spat out a vibrating click when he saw that his attacks, verbal and physical, hadn't managed to wipe the smirk off the human's face, choosing to close the argument by having the last word, even if it was simply because Dib had no idea of what he had said. The trip back to Earth would have been and seemed long enough and he didn't wish to make it even more unbearable. It would have been a waste if he had ended up killing the ape after he had tried so hard to keep him alive.

He carefully crossed his arms over his chest and shifted in his spot until he was comfortable enough despite being pressed up against the teen's side. The other's body was warmth and, now that his system was starting to shut down the unnecessary functions to be able to repair itself and handle the connection better, the heat wasn't so unwelcome.

"That…was close."

Dib's voice echoed in the silence that had fallen over them. The human was looking out of the glass, his amber eyes reflecting the pale light of the stars. His expression was mostly neutral, but his relief was evident in the reduced tension of his shoulders. His mouth curled slightly downwards and he turned his head to look at the alien.

"I mean, we almost…ended up like those things in the lab," he went on, unable to suppress the shiver that run down his spine at the too fresh nightmarish memories. "Or died, if we had been luckier. But instead…you got us out and…uh. That's good."

Zim found himself rolling his eyes as his rival started to stumble on his words. He already had a hard time following half of the human's odd, seemingly pointless speeches when the other didn't struggle to find his words, let alone when he did. "Does your idiotic speech have a point, Dib?" He pressed, annoyance dripping off his tone. "Or are you just trying to waste Zim's time?"

"You are _impossible_ ," the teen grumbled in answer, barely resisting the urge to throw his hands in the air. He was already choking on his own sentences to try and get them out, because the idea of doing it horrified him, but the jerk had still decided to save his life, for reasons that were still mostly obscure to him, and so he felt like he _had_ to address the fact, in some way. "What I'm trying to say, alien scum, is…" He sucked in a breath and swallowed. "Thank you. For having got me out of there in one piece."

The Irken had been ready to hiss out an insult in answer to his rival's first statement, but the words died in his throat as the other went on, spelling out the last thing he would have ever thought to hear, coming from Dib. His spooch contorted slightly, spreading an awkward feeling in his chest, and he found himself clenching and unclenching his fists in the attempt to unload the sudden wave of nervous energy that had shaken him. The atmosphere had become thick once again between them and every shared breath seemed out of place. However, on the other hand, he knew that he couldn't just let the words hang in the air without an answer or just dismiss them with some meaningless remark. They weighted on him in a way that coaxed him to do something about them.

"Yes, you have all the reasons to want to thank your future overlord," he settled on saying after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, lifting his chin a bit. Then his magenta eyes reluctantly met Dib's amber one. "And Zim must say that…You weren't completely useless. Flooding that room with plasma was a decent idea. For a human."

The human nodded slightly in assent, biting back something that was half way between a grin and an exasperated sigh, as they silently decided to let the conversation die once again. There were many things that could have been added, but they were facts and truths that would have made their future interactions far too troublesome. It wasn't worth it, especially considering that, once they would have parted ways, they would have never mentioned that misadventure again. Forgetting about it and about all the unacknowledged implications wouldn't have been that easy. The physical marks might have faded, but the ones deeply engraved in their memories were a whole other story.


End file.
